When I
first heard UBC’s fundraising catchphrase “Start an Evolution”, I
thought this was a bit silly because in biology most evolutionary
changes take a very long time, although there are certainly
examples to the contrary. But then I started thinking about
the evolution of organizations, like universities or departments,
where the time scale should be much shorter and “intelligent
design” is essential. So I started thinking about how our
department is evolving and I’m pleased to report that the process
seems to be going very well!

Within the next 6-8 months we will have two new
faculty members, Lisa Osborne and Cara Haney. Both Lisa and Cara
work on host-microbiome-pathogen interactions, an extremely timely
topic. Lisa will focus on the gut microbiome, which controls
everything, and will use genetically engineered mouse strains to
gain new insights into these complex multi-kingdom (mammalian host,
bacteria, viruses, protozoa, worms, fungi) interactions. In
contrast, Cara will study some of the same concepts in the context
of plant roots, which she quipped as being like the gut microbiome,
except with the microbes on the outside. Just like the human gut
microbiome affects distant immune processes involved in asthma in
the lung, the plant root microbiome regulates that plant’s innate
immune responses in the leaves that protect them from pathogenic
bacteria and chewing insects. We are looking forward to Lisa and
Cara joining us at UBC and creating research synergies that will
“evolve” our understanding of the critical role of host-microbiome
interactions in controlling multiple physiological
processes.

It’s also great to see that our younger faculty members are
“differentiating” into stars, as we knew that they would.
Martin Hirst has established himself as a leader in the field of
epigenetics, which has completely changed our view of how gene
expression is regulated during development, in the context of cell
fate decisions, and in the transformation of normal cells into
malignant cells. Martin was part of the large-scale NIH
Epigenomics Roadmap project and was an author on four Nature Press
papers that all came out on the same day. Quite an
achievement! Sean Crowe, who has brought geomicrobiology to
our department, has combined precise chemical measurements with
microbial community analysis of core samples to reveal how bacteria
transformed the earth’s physical environment and contributed to the
initial oxygenation of the oceans and the atmosphere 2.4 billion
years ago. This has resulted in papers in Nature and Science
that have received a great deal of attention. In addition to having
established herself as a fabulous instructor, Georgia Perona-Wright
is unraveling the complexities of how cytokines and their receptors
mediate both local and public conversations between lymphocytes in
order to coordinate immune responses in the context of infections
and co-infections with multiple pathogens. Because many people in
the world are chronically infected with parasites, understanding
how this modulates their immune responses to other pathogens and to
vaccines is critical. Our new instructor, Dave Oliver, is using his
industry experience to direct the evolution of our MICB 421 and
MICB 447 lab courses by emphasizing modern approaches in project
management and communication. In these courses, and others, major
projects now involve producing effective and informative videos.
This is part of how we are “evolving” our teaching approaches, with
M&I being leaders in introducing active learning approaches into
our courses and placing strong emphasis on developing transferrable
skills (communication skills, experience working as a team, project
management, leadership skills, etc.) in both our undergraduate and
graduate programs.

Well, it
has been a big year for MISA. Our executive board went into
September with a single objective in mind: to further the lives of
our peers both academically and socially. Since then, we have
worked tirelessly to deliver events that facilitated the creation
of long-lasting relationships and enhanced student learning outside
of the classroom.

We kicked off the year with a welcome back BBQ and
our annual MISA Icebreaker. After getting settled into school life
again, we launched our Mentorship Program. In this program, second
and third year students were paired up with more seasoned fourth
and fifth year students who advise them on how to succeed in MBIM
and how to approach professors to find the research experiences
that interested them most.

In keeping with the Virology theme of MICB 306 we
held our departmental vaccine initiative in November, where faculty
members and students were vaccinated against the flu. That same
month, our Undergraduate Research Conference received very positive
reviews from the student community. In collaboration with the
Undergraduate Research Organization (URO), Biology Student Society
(BIOSOC), Biochemistry, Pharmacy and Pharmacology Club (BPP), and
Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) we put on this event to provide
undergraduate students in the Faculty of Science with the tools to
get into research. There were multiple workshops, including
sessions on how to approach research professors, how to write a
resume, how to design a poster presentation, informational
workshops on all the scholarships available to students, and a
session about grad school and what it takes to be a successful grad
student.

In February we put on “NERDLOVE”, a Valentines
Day-themed event that connected MBIM students with the greater
Faculty of Science student community. To finish off the year, we
collaborated with UBC’s brewing club – BruBC – to bring our MBIM
students MISA’s first-ever brewing event. This was a month-long
brewing project where student teams brew a beer of their choice and
then participate in a tasting competition. This was truly a fun
time as well as a great educational experience – we were finally
able to apply the concepts of fermentation biology to something we
were quite passionate about!

But while all of these amazing events were going on,
we also made sure to take the time to organize some casual pub
nights for our students to unwind during exam time. Over the course
of this year it was amazing to see how our student community
evolved into a tight-knit bunch that really cared for each other.
We are so happy to have been involved in this incredible experience
and to have made long-lasting friendships with some of the
brightest, most interesting, funny, hardworking and caring people
here at UBC.

So yes, it has been a great year for MISA, and we
hope that next year will only be greater!

Cheers,

Your 2014/15 MISA Executives.

Development
of new drug combinations to treat Mycobacterial diseases

While
hundreds of drugs are available for treating most bacterial
diseases in Western countries, few are active for treatment of
Mycobacterial diseases that are common in developing countries.
These include tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis,
or Buruli Ulcer, caused by Mycobacterium
ulcerans.

New drugs can take up to 14 years and $800 million to bring
to market, an investment not commercially feasible for diseases
affecting major populations in underdeveloped parts of the
world.

Our lab developed new technologies to study how
currently available, FDA approved drugs might work alone, or in
synergy to kill Mycobacterial pathogens. We screened 4,000
different FDA approved compounds, including 500 antibiotics, and
were surprised to find that many were synergistically active
against M.
tuberculosis or M.
ulcerans. Working with the Centre for Drug
Research and Development at UBC, GlaxoSmithKline in Spain, The
University of Colorado, and The Swiss Tropical and Public Health
Institute, we are further developing these repurposed drugs and
drug combinations. Our results have attracted the interest of
doctors at a leading clinic in South Africa who want to test new
drug combinations on MDR-TB and XDR-TB patients. Since these drugs
have already been approved, the cost and time it takes to translate
research from bench to bedside could be greatly reduced. We
have the potential to get new drug combinations to patients at a
fraction of the cost in time and money. The high proportion of synergistic
interactions also illustrates the need for this type of screening
for all bacterial pathogens that have become multidrug resistant.

The Beatty Group's Solar
Energy Project

It was
about ten years ago that M&I's Tom Beatty called the UBC
electrical engineer John Madden to ask for help on what appeared to
be a far-fetched idea: can we benefit from nature's methods,
as in plants and photosynthetic bacteria, to harvest light energy
and effectively convert photons to electrons -- and use the
electrons in a device to generate electricity? The short answer is,
yes!

The Beatty and Madden groups have come
together to use genetic engineering and biochemical separation
techniques developed in the Beatty lab, along with device
modeling and fabrication
techniques

employed in Madden’s group, to create several types
of small-scale devices that convert light energy to electricity.
This work utilizes photosynthetic proteins that naturally harvest
light energy and convert this energy to a flow of electrons. In
photosynthesis, this electron flow is immediately tapped in
chemical reactions by other proteins in a living cell. In our work
we remove the proteins from the bacterial cell and divert the
light-driven electron flow to a fabricated electrode, where
electrons enter an electrical circuit to power devices. Work by
others had shown the feasibility of this approach but currents and
voltages were much smaller than is theoretically possible. In our
approach the efficient transfer of electrons from the protein to
the electrode is enhanced by using genetically engineered proteins,
whose properties are changed in geometrically and chemically
precise ways, along with new methods for construction of solar
cells. The net result of using these altered proteins and new cell
configurations is much a much more efficient connection of the
electron donor (the protein) to the acceptor (the electrode), and
hence greatly improved electrical current.

In addition to diverting electrons from the protein,
we have also worked on improving the wavelength range of photons
that are harvested by the protein to initiate electron transfer
reactions. This work has been done in collaboration with Neal
Woodbury's group and colleagues at the Arizona State University.
Commercially available solar panels absorb a limited range of the
solar spectrum, defined by the physical properties of the
light-harvesting substance employed. Our research was to modify our
photosynthetic chlorophyll-binding proteins that naturally
harvest light and produce electrical voltage.Bacterial proteins
were genetically engineered to increase the range
of solar spectrum absorption by incorporating synthetic
light-harvesting dyes. A novel combination of natural protein
chlorophylls, DNA linkers and synthetic dyes was used to greatly
expand the range of the solar spectrum that can be used to
produce electrical voltage.

Our work is one step
leading to the demonstration of photosynthetic proteins as
inexpensive, efficient and environmentally
sustainable components of solar panels, which could be
developed in commercial applications. We have several patents in
progress, although the curiosity that drives the fundamental side
of our research and resultant new knowledge has been the most
important factor in our success.

The success of our department members requires the continual
evolution of their research programs and is reflected in the many
awards that they received in the past year. This includes
Brett Finlay being awarded the 2014 Prix Galien Canada for his contributions
to pharmaceutical research and innovation, Steven Hallam begin
elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science as well as a Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment
Leopold Leadership Fellow, Lindsay Eltis being named a Tier 1
Canada Research Chair in Microbial Catabolism and Biocatalysis, Bob
Hancock being renewed as a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in New
Anti-Infective Strategies, Georgia Perona-Wright receiving a
Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award, and
Sean Crowe being elected as a Peter Wall Institute Scholar.

An important part of both our personal evolution, and our evolution
as a department, is transitioning from looking inward to
increasingly looking outward in terms of our contributions to
society. Our most important contribution to society is of
course the students who graduate from our programs and go on to
make important contributions in many venues. We are reminded of
this in many ways, some of them a bit awkward, such as when the physician
who was to perform a colonoscopy on me revealed that he had had me
as instructor in MICB 202. In any case, it is most gratifying to
hear from our former students about how the training they received
in our programs gave them the opportunities and the tools to make a
difference and to contribute to their community.

In this regard, we are very proud of our community engagement
events and outreach events such as World TB Day and Day of
Immunology. Many of our department members are involved in initiatives
aimed at informing the public about the importance of microbiology
and immunology in their lives, and in broadening the horizons of
young students so that they think that they too can be scientists.
I want to highlight the efforts of Nicolette Fonseca, a graduate
student in Georgia Perona-Wright’s lab. Nicolette established
an eMentoring program that links graduate students at UBC with
senior undergraduates at St. Xavier’s College in Goa, India. Her
goal is to increase the students’ awareness of the research
possibilities available globally, and to build confidence and a
sense of opportunity among science students in Goa. She conceived
the idea, selected and trained the UBC mentors and worked with
faculty at St. Xavier’s to make connections to students in Goa. For
establishing this international mentoring program, Nicolette was
awarded a Faculty of Science Service Achievement Award.

So both as individuals and a department, the question now is: How
are we going to evolve ourselves in the next year so that we take
on new challenges and position ourselves to make positive impacts
locally and globally? Based on the track record, I predict that
current and past M&I members will come up with many highly
creative and highly successful answers to this question.